Frequently Asked Questions

How do I book food trucks for my office?

We get it. You’re sick of going to the same three restaurants over and over. Delivery food comes lukewarm at best, meaning say goodbye to crispy french fries, and get used to using words like “soggy” and “stale”. Catering trays where you have little choice, and 25% of that food is likely going into the trash.

That’s where food trucks come in. Food trucks are the best possible solution to bring a professional chef and a kitchen steps from your office. No soggy fries. No long wait times.

Nashville Best Food Trucks also provides an online ordering system for all our trucks so you never have to wait in line. When your food is ready, you’ll receive a text message so you can come grab it fresh. No lines means you can get more work done, relax more, or become your office hero.

This is why we see a lot of offices starting to use food trucks a lot more than traditional catering dishes. You get all the convenience of online ordering with the freshest possible food made right outside your doorstep.

Typically, offices would have to manage this whole process themselves, negotiate minimums, check certifications and licenses, track booking, manage and track payouts, and routing customer feedback to the truck. Sounds fun, right? Nashville Best Food Trucks does all of this, for FREE. We want to make sure you’re happy with your lunch options, so with our unique software approach along with our decade of relationships with food trucks in your area, you won’t have to dread the “What do you want to do for lunch?” question anymore.

Let us know if you are interested in trying us out by clicking the button below. We’ll get back to you ASAP and try to help you become your office hero. :)

How does Nashville Best Food Trucks work?

NashvilleBest Food Trucks is an end-to-end solution to connect gourmet food trucks with customers in a variety of ways. We’ve built a unique software solution to streamline the process of booking and scheduling trucks, and an exclusive order ahead technology that takes away the hassle of long lines and lets the food trucks focus on making food rather than having to sit at a cash register.

There are other companies that do booking, but not like NBFT. For example, we have an exclusive order ahead technology so customers / tenants / attendees can see real photo menus, order from their phone or desktop, and get texted when their food is ready. In addition, we collect ratings via SMS so we have data when it comes to which food trucks you like, and which ones you don’t. That way, we can automatically optimize based on preferences.

Plus, we truly pick from the best food trucks in your area. Our goal is to send a variety of trucks with quality food that’s healthy, and not just the same trucks every week.

Most other companies simply send out food trucks and don’t bother to collect feedback from their customers. And most other food truck companies want you to waste your time in line and waiting for your name to be called for some reason.

We just want you have the freshest food with a convenient ordering method from a food truck steps outside your office.

So what does that mean? Here’s a few ways of how we work:

Office Catering

Our main business is helping offices and property managers in buildings with with limited food options transform their lunch experience. If you’re a property manager, you want to make sure your existing or prospective tenants are happy with their nearby food options otherwise they might choose somewhere else. And if you’re an employer, you want to keep employees happy with fresh food close to home.

Typically, this means we’ll setup a regular daily spot Monday-Friday for food trucks to come out. All we need is a loading bay, a saved parking spot, or somewhere that the food truck can park. If you know of a spot that’s not literally your building but across the street, we can work with that as well.

We also do food truck catering for meetings as well. Whether you’re a salesperson looking to impress clients, an executive who wants to do something to reward their team, or just are tired of the same boring catering food (of which 25% goes straight to the trash bin), we can book the truck for you and take care of the payment logistics. Plus, you can order online so your meeting goes smoothly without people having to wait in line.

Apartments

If you live in an apartment, email your leasing office about partnering with Best Food Trucks. We’ve helped numerous apartment buildings setup a regular stop for residents so they can enjoy fresh food literally steps from their front door.

For apartments, we work with the leasing office to find the best spot (typically a parking spot, loading bay, or somewhere convenient for both the truck and residents) for the truck to park. Then, we’ll open up the spots to our amazing network of 1000+ food trucks we work with across the country and find the best food trucks local to your area.

The process is incredibly easy to setup, and requires virtually no work on the apartment side. We totally get that leasing agents are incredibly busy as it is, so we do 99% of the work to help residents know about the trucks, order online, and answer any questions they might have via SMS.

Music Festivals / Events / Theme Parks

If you’re planning an event and want food trucks, please do yourself a favor and let us help you. With BFT’s order ahead technology, attendees can order from their phone and get texted when their food is ready.

Even if you’re experienced in booking food trucks in the past, without our order ahead technology, you’re basically going to waste an hour of your attendees’ time in line when they could be watching bands, walking around, spending more money, or enjoying the programming you’ve meticulously crafted.

We can take care of all the booking/scheduling/negotiating with the food trucks, or plug-in to your existing process to help get it to the finish line along with day-of live monitoring to make sure everything goes smoothly.

Anything else?

We do a TON more with food trucks… everything from weddings, charities, studio and on-set, to tv/film productions, concerts, stadiums, and more. If your project or application involves anything remotely involved with food trucks or you just want to upgrade your existing catering / food vendor experience, reach out and we’ll help you either way!

Which food trucks do you work with?

Is there any work on my part?

NBFT works with over a thousand trucks across the country. Whether you’re looking for food trucks in Los Angeles, Austin, Portland, D.C., or dozens more cities across the country, NBFT will find the right trucks for you.

One common misconception that people sometimes have with food trucks is that they are always unhealthy food. If you’re working in an office and you had colleagues head out to the food trucks, you might have been reluctant to go along if you’re trying to eat healthy, you’re watching calories, or you have dietary restrictions.

When we put together the preference sheets for each location, we take into account not only a variety of cuisine, but making sure there are healthy food and “clean” food options. We’re not going to send five taco trucks or cheesesteak trucks to your location in a row, and at the same time we’re not sending only salad trucks either. We work with food trucks to make sure they have a variety of options within their menu, so each truck has something that’s healthy as well. Just because you’re eating from food trucks doesn’t mean you need to sacrifice your gluten-free, vegan or just healthy diet.

When you sign up for Nashville Best Food Trucks, we’ll work with you to create the preference sheet so you can let us know what kinds of trucks you like, or if you have requests for specific trucks that you love. Once we start booking trucks, we’ll collect ratings from customers which will help us learn which trucks you love, and which ones are better suited for other spots.

How much does it cost?

Signing up and integrating with NBFT is FREE! If you’re a property manager, employer, commercial real estate company, apartment building, leasing office, or anyone else who wants to book food trucks on a regular stop or for catering / events, we don’t charge a dime.

That means we’ll take care of all the logistics of bookings, negotiating minimums, setting up a schedule of trucks that constantly shift cuisines, and providing an order ahead technology that allows people to order ahead from the food trucks via their desktop or phone web browser costs a grand total of zero!

So how do we make our money? We work with the food trucks to provide them access & vending locations, and maximize business for them for a small convenience fee, approximately one third of our competitors. If we don’t send them wonderful customers like yourself, we don’t make money ourselves. Either way, nothing comes out of your pocket.

In short, if having a professional chef in a mobile kitchen parked right outside, which keeps your tenants, residents, and/or employees happy is completely free and makes you look great, what’s stopping you from signing up?

What if we already have food trucks?

If you already have food trucks, that means you also already have lines during lunch, no way for people to order and see photo menus, no schedule, and no ratings feedback collected by customers so there’s no iteration based upon what people actually like.

When office buildings switch over to us, we typically see the same setup in most cases. Either there’s no dedicated page that shows an upcoming schedule, or an email has to be sent out daily, or there’s a google calendar that has names of trucks but no menus, or basic flyers that might have a menu that is months old and severely outdated (as food trucks change their menus frequently).

We receive ratings every day from every lot that we’re active on which we use to then iterate the selection to ensure everyone is happy. Traditional food truck companies have virtually zero relationship with your people, so they have no idea what people like or don’t like, and thus they’re stuck sending the same trucks over and over.

In addition, we have a dedicated support team working around the clock via text message so when people have questions or need help with their order, we respond.

But most importantly, why would anyone want to wait in line at the truck when they could order ahead, and pick up their food when it’s ready? The biggest reason why office buildings switch to Best Food Trucks (BFT) is simply because they want their employees or tenants to enjoy their lunch hour and not waste it in line. When customers order online from us, they can get more work done, or simply relax and enjoy their lunch hour talking to friends instead of literally standing in place for 20-30 minutes.

In other words, the difference is night and day. If you have food trucks already, then let us help make your employees or tenants’ lives easier and signup today. We’ll keep any food trucks you already have scheduled and turn on online ordering ASAP so people can start enjoying the benefits immediately. We’ll also handle all the logistics of switching vendors so you don’t have to lift a finger.

Plus, when you start getting emails from happy people thanking you for enabling order ahead and allowing them to take back their lunch hour, you’ll wonder yourself why you ever had people wait in line in the first place.

What if my office or business already has catering?

If you already get food from banquet or trough-style catering in giant metal trays, then many workplace catering problems might look familiar to you.

The problem with catering is that you’re making food for everyone, but not everyone is going to eat it. And the rest of that food becomes waste that goes straight into the garbage. The best part? You’re paying for all that food that gets dumped.

Catering dishes provide very little choice for people, especially for those with dietary restrictions. Typically you’re going to have 1-2 meat plates, 1 veggie option, maybe 1-2 sides, and that’s it. Forget about the flexibility of a full menu, or items like burritos or sandwiches with custom fillings. And if someone is allergic to garlic or something specific, they might literally not be able to eat anything with this cookie-cutter approach.

While catering trays might be kept hot, they certainly aren’t fresh or made-to-order. Those metal trays had food in them likely hours before you even eat it, so the chances of getting fresh, crunchy, or non-soggy food becomes slim to none.

In other words, if you’re using traditional catering, you’re paying for food that gets thrown into the garbage, you’re limiting your options, you’re not providing options for those with dietary restrictions or food allergies, you’re not allowing people to make their own choices about what they want to eat, and you’re having people settle for food pre-made hours before they actually eat it.

With Best Food Trucks (BFT), food is only made for people ordering, so there’s drastically less food waste. Instead of only one or two main options, people can choose from a full menu of delicious entrees and appetizers. If someone hates mushrooms or is allergic to garlic or is vegan / gluten-free or wants the sauce on the side or any other modification, they have the choice to eat what they actually want.

To help companies with catering switch to this drastically better experience, Best Food Trucks (BFT) also offers a streamlined employer-paid lunch program, meaning offices can put a payment option on file, select which days and how much they’re willing to cover, and create a whitelist of people who are eligible.

For example, an office can set eligible days to every Monday / Wednesday / Friday, and up to $15 in credits for employees. Anything over $15, the employee can put a card on file and cover. This program applies to all the trucks on our platform, so no need to keep running down to food trucks with a corporate card for every lunch shift.

Now, companies are only paying for food that’s actually used, rather than ordering catering for everyone and having people who called in sick, didn’t like the option, were too busy in a meeting, or any other reason to not eat and have that food thrown out.

Plus, we’ll give companies reports on which food trucks showed up, how many orders, reviews and feedback, and other reporting to provide transparency in how the program is going.

If you’re interested in upgrading your catering experience and making your employees’ happier and more productive, click the button below and we’ll set you up with a regular food truck schedule along with setting up your employer-paid lunch program.